ICS.AI joins techUK: inside our first Local Public Services Innovation Summit

This week marked a milestone for ICS.AI: our first outing as a member of techUK, the UK's technology trade association. Chief Customer Officer Andrew Smith represented ICS.AI at techUK's Local Public Services Innovation Summit 2026, held at techUK's London offices on 15 September - a full day bringing together council leaders, central government and the supplier community to talk through the issues shaping local public services right now.

Who are techUK, and why does membership matter?

techUK brings together more than 1,100 member organisations - from FTSE 100 names to fast-growing SMEs - to help shape how technology is used across business, government and society. Its Local Public Services programme in particular exists to connect councils and suppliers, influence procurement reform, and push shared thinking on digital maturity across the sector.

For ICS.AI, joining techUK isn't just about adding a logo to our website. It puts us in the room with the people actually setting the agenda for AI and digital transformation in local government - MHCLG, the LGA, GDS Local, and the councils and combined authorities we work with every day. It gives us a seat at the table on procurement reform, reuse and share initiatives, and the policy conversations that will shape how councils buy and deploy AI over the next few years. And it's a direct line into peers, partners and potential collaborators across the supplier landscape - the kind of relationships that get built in person, not over email.

The event: Local Public Services Innovation Summit 2026

The Summit is run by techUK's Local Public Services Committee, elected in October 2025, which has spent the months since focused on procurement reform and digital maturity - specifically how technology can be better procured, shared and reused across local government. This year's agenda built on that work, covering digital transformation, procurement, and agentic AI in the “council of the future,” all set against a backdrop of significant change: a Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) programme in part now paused and under review following the government's 7 September announcement, and a local elections cyle reshaping councils' priorities.

The day ran across five main sessions:

Reforming the local state - a keynote from Jens Gemmel (London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham) arguing that meaningful reform doesn't have to wait for LGR. One idea that stuck: building datasets around the whole household, not single service interactions, so councils can spot the signals that allow early, proactive intervention rather than reacting after the fact.

Committee and partner priorities - a panel featuring Madi Smith (CTO, North Yorkshire Council, who leads a 280-strong digital team), Jonathan Stephenson (CEO, Brentwood and Rochford Council) and others, digging into how councils move past fragmented systems and how LGR is creating space to work differently with partners.

From reorganisation to reinvention - with Phil Rumens of GDS Local — the Government Digital Service's dedicated unit for connecting central and local government on digital transformation - making the case for reinvention: shared standards, components and architecture models rather than every council building its own. Reused patterns, extracted data from legacy back-office systems, and AI applied end-to-end were recurring themes.

ReuseAndShare - a panel on accelerating reuse across the sector, including the GOV.UK Reuse Library, with real interest in best-practice case studies and practical GenAI use cases.

AI and the council of the future - an update from Kat Sexton, MHCLG's Deputy Director for Local AI, who referenced the Number 10 AI Taskforce and the drive to take proven local examples and scale them nationally.

Data was a strong sub-theme throughout: Oxygen Insights shared analysis showing local government spend down slightly year on year, with fewer large deals, growing consultancy spend among the big four, and SMEs still winning a meaningful share (around 28%) even as larger, established suppliers take the bigger contracts. Tender activity, as ever, is expected to pick up in the run-up to year end.

A good first showing

It was a strong first event to be part of. It was great to hear ICS.AI come up repeatedly in conversation – our work with Derby City Council was referenced across sessions as an example of best practice.

Beyond the sessions, we had several positive partner conversations and reconnected with familiar faces from across the local government and supplier community. A genuinely valuable day of sessions and conversation.

Looking ahead

This is just the start of ICS.AI's involvement with techUK. Being part of conversations like these - with central government, the LGA, GDS Local and fellow suppliers all in the room - means we can keep building the partnerships and sharing the insight that help us support councils through change. We're looking forward to the next one.

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